Neural basis of construction and attention
- Walter J. Freeman (Neurobiology, Univ. of Berkeley)
- neurophysiological basis for "Metodologia Operativa"
- neural mechanism for selective attention and the unity of brain function that shapes perception
- no fixed relation between patterns of sensory stimuli and patterns of cortical activity (perception)
- a perceptual system determines for itself what is signal (the percept) and what is noise, without use of filters
- microscopic input (sensory stimulus) triggers the endogenous construction of macroscopic spatial pattern of cortical activity (percept)
- the cortical dynamics of perceptual construction is nonlinear and chaotic at the level of neural masses
- idea of representation: unnecessary, misleading, impedes advances in brain/mind research
- behaviors are not deterministic responses to stimuli, they express internally generated (= self-organizing) neural activity
- concepts as integrands (Kant) of neural activity and consciousness as process that combines a concept with those preceding it
©1998,M.Bettoni,CZM,Fachhochschule beider Basel
Go to: Next slide / Index of talk